


History: In all my good years, there you were

by Aeshna etonensis (GMWWemyss)



Series: Tales From Bent Clough [8]
Category: One Direction (Band), Village Tales
Genre: Bent Clough, Christmas, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Kid Fic, Leek, Longnor, M/M, Staffordshire, Staffordshire Moorlands, Village life, the Peak District
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 04:19:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17093915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GMWWemyss/pseuds/Aeshna%20etonensis
Summary: Christmas Future, twenty years on....





	History: In all my good years, there you were

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Niler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niler/gifts), [Bubba (absynthedrinker)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/absynthedrinker/gifts), [elmyraemilie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elmyraemilie/gifts), [Fenniferj](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenniferj/gifts), [HealerLady](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HealerLady/gifts), [noeon (noe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noe/gifts), [Femme (femmequixotic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/femmequixotic/gifts), [freakybb2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/freakybb2/gifts), [JoMouse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoMouse/gifts).



* * *

 

* * *

 

It was, Zayn reflected, entirely typical of their friend and mentor Charles – the duke of Taunton, and now in his seventies as trim and as appallingly energetic as ever – that he had … prevailed … upon Royal Doulton to issue a second – and full – set of Bunnykins cricketing figurines: a full XI, a Twelfth Man, an umpire, and two elderly crocks of bunnies, in MCC blazers and ties, snoring in the Pavilion. These last were by no means His Grace and his old right-hander and Eton and OUCC vice-captain HH the Nawab: His Highness was no more decrepit than was the duke, who, veteran-class or no, could even now, for the MCC side, hit any England Test bowler all ’round the wicket at Lord’s. The Nawab’s absence from these friendlies-in-name-only was owing, instead, to HH the Begum’s increasing frailty, which she bore gamely; Their Highnesses had not had children of their own, any more than had had the duke, now happily married to his superb duchess, Millicent, but the Nawab was a solicitous husband.

Oh, well, it made Christmas shopping easier, thought Zayn: which, Charles being a famously indulgent godfather and uncle – and granduncle, nowadays –, had doubtless been His Grace’ purpose.

And anything which made Christmas shopping easier was, maintained Zayn, a good thing: and specially so now, on yet another day upon which that was the ostensible purpose.

He caught a glimpse of his reflection in a shop window; and fell to reflecting.

The silver at the temples, admitted he, ruefully and only to himself, was no longer one of his youthful experiments in chameleonic hair-colours: though at least his hair had stayed put, though the failure of his Liam’s to do so had in no wise marred his beauty, insisted Zayn fiercely. Then again, confessed Zayn to himself, he’d _been_ a chameleon in those wasted years.... Charles – and the Nawab, and others of the Great and Good – had rescued them from Modest, and Sony, and those psychotic sycophants at Syco; yet there’d been even so long-set plans to be played out. Staged quarrels; breaches in the observance; solo recordings: the sting in the tail of wretchedly unfair contracts, all of it.... Wasted years redeemed from wasting only by ducal cunning, which had transformed these exactions into opportunity (Louis, and Zayn, kicking and screaming and throwing wobblies – and their dummies from the pram – all the way). There’d been, for example, Liam’s cover album: Temple Street, Wolvo Catacombs Northern Soul, all Dobie Gray and Jimmy Radcliffe and Jackie Wilson, Jerry Butler and Al Wilson and Major Lance: which, to some ambivalence in Zayn’s feelings, which he’d carefully concealed, had forced his love’s detractors to sit up, take notice, concede, and – this being the source of Zayn’s possessive ambivalence – fall for Liam wholly, even as they’d fallen, like Icarus ruining from heav’n, for Zayn in _his_ annus mirabilis.

Millicent Taunton, formidable and universally beloved with it, learned and lovely, had, before marrying Charles, been Professor the baroness Lacy in her own right, a Professorial Fellow of Chad’s, Durham: one of the Big Beasts of British archæology and history. And Charles duke of Taunton, that old Int Corps officer and cricketer, was himself a noted historian and biographer, and a Fellow of All Souls. It had from the beginning been impossible, on trips here to Leek, to get their daughters, Molly and then Wee Karen in their turns, away from Picture Book and from Sherratt & Reece; it was due to the Tauntons’ influence that Joe, who once cared only for the prints and maps at the latter – graphic-minded little bugger, thought Zayn, fondly, like both his fathers –, was now as avid a reader as any, and finishing his degree – Ancient History and Archaeology – at Durham, before heading off to Loughborough and the National Cricket Performance Centre, and eventual England-capped glory.

Not, conceded Zayn, privately, that those three, clamouring for Christmas shopping jaunts to Leek, were always amenable to leaving Zayn to losing himself for hours in the Foxlowe Arts Centre’s galleries, or his wandering, with the ghost of William Morris, the Nicholson Museum & Art Gallery. When Joe, Molly, and Kaz were On A Mission, not even Liam’s enthusiasm for hours of poking about Cheddleton Flint Mill could sway them, from brekker unto the famous Leek Double Sunset; and Joe least of all, he having, at Repton, chosen with his eyes open a particularly Arnoldian and _muscular_ form of nominal Anglicanism....

(But that dedication to self-knowing and independence was Joe all over, wasn’t it, reflected his baba. He’d gone out, a time or three, with the Styles-Tomlinsons’ Joan, had Their Joe, remembered Zayn; and both had on the friendliest terms realised it wasn’t on and there was nothing there. Haz and Liam had been rather better than had been Zayn and the Tommo, the old Bus One partners in crime, at hiding their horror at the walking-out and their relief that nowt came of it....)

O where did the time go? Karen counting the days to reading English Lang.-and-Lit. at LMH; Molly setting Newnham Cantab by the ears....

Not wasted years, then; never that. Then, or now.

Even Charles’ niece Hetty – Henrietta Maria, a notably Stuart name for a notable Stuart descendant – no longer openly regarded Zayn and Liam, and Nialler, and Haz-and-the-Tommo, as younger avatars of their older counterparts in Charles’ Wiltshire fastness. Years and divergent paths in life had seen to that, even for so hardcore a Directioner as was and remained Hetty. (That she was now, by courtesy, viscountess Grampound, wife to Mark viscount Grampound; mother to Richard baron Lanlivery, the Hon. Charles, and the Hon. Constance; and at any sad moment liable to find herself the countess of Treskilling, wife to a new-succeeded earl thereof, had not changed Hetty one whit.)

And, too, their friend and comfort Noel Paddick – where had the good years gone? – was no longer the young canon-rector of the Woolfonts in Wiltshire far: he was nowadays the Rt Revd the Bishop Suffragan of Shaftesbury, providing diocesan AEO for all the trad parishes in the bishopric of Sarum. His former senior curate, now _Canon_ Paul Campion SSC, was rector of the combined benefice now, and long since married to Gemma Douty; Canon Campion was in turn assisted by new curates of his own: by Fr Brockway, whose old dad had been a Detective Inspector, and in time ACC Crime, of Wilts Police; and by the Revd Philip Allred SSC, Edmond Huskisson’s natural son. Fr Pip Allred was, like his late mum and gran, a novelist; like his dad, he was a born footballer, who took the Church Lads’ and Church Girls’ Brigade for sport; and, as the duke and Noel Paddick had intended from the off, he was a Reserve RAF chaplain, RAuxAF. Fr Bohun was now largely retired, having been for a time the Very Revd Gilbert Bohun, late Dean of Wolfdown; old Fr Gascelyn Levett was long since with God.

And Bishop Paddick – like Edmond Huskisson and Teddy Gates, The Breener Maguire (now Sir Brian) and the Hon. Gwen, Lady Maguire – was well into his fifties now, having a decade on Zayn and Liam. (Louis Tomlinson refused, on the very cusp of fifty, to admit that such an age existed.) So also was the man of whom Zayn was most in awe: Sir Sher Mirza CH KBE CVO, Headmaster of Beechbourne, heir to the heir to the nawabate, learned, deservingly honoured, and a man awarded both the Bach Prize and the Queen’s Medal for Music.

Where did the time go? Age had not withered, custom had not staled, the Tauntons; but the years had exacted their toll all the same. Locally, there’d been every year another face gone: a Malkin, a Critchlow, a Belfield; a Walwyn, a Tunnicliff, an Edge. Further afield, old Lady Agatha Prothero-Fane was silent at last – on Earth, at any rate –, and Rory Badenoch lang syne piped to his kirkyard; and Hugo, 25th Baron Mallerstang, 14th Baron Swarthfell, 11th / 13th Baron Mallerstang & Swarthfell, DSO & Bar MC, had departed this life as had all his fellow old soldiers of the Hitler War now, and almost all of those who’d fought in Korea. Even the Yanks’ – and the Aussies’ – Vietnam old soldiers were almost to a man departed. Hugo had made a supercentenarian all the same: a man who’d survived a Japanese bayonet at Singapore; Changi; and the Burma Railway, had not died readily: and though his sons, Gunner officers as he had been a Gunner officer, had not survived him, he had had a fit successor in Charles’ nephew and heir presumptive, Rupert, Master of Dilton.

And Rupert was now, yet the next heir to the dukedom, Maj Rupert Lord Mallerstang CB GM QVRM DL; a Reserve Gunner officer; wed to Arabella Lady Mallerstang, the Hon. Bells; father to James Charles Rodger Alban, Henry Gilbert Hugo Benedict, and Anne Mary Elizabeth Arabella, unrebelling Hons.; and waiting, not for Taunton and a ducal coronet, and five rows of ermine and All That, but, with equal dread, on the earldom of Wigan to fall in. His Naval brother – their sister Hetty Grampound was the youngest of the three –, that equable middle child, was nowadays, owing to a Royal Warrant of Precedence issued when Rupert had succeeded Hugo, Lt Cdr the Hon. James Fitzjames-Holles-Clare-Malet CBE RN: historian after the manner of his ducal uncle, ornament of Naval and Defence intelligence, enthusiastic husband to Catherine, the Hon. Cats, and proud father to Charles Valentine Edward Denzil.

It had been Jamie, rather thought Zayn, who’d told him, idly, that Getliffes Yard, the haughtiest shopping parade in Leek, had once been the site of stables, low public houses, and doss-houses, where travellers could sleep, standing, against a post or bollard for one-pence. Zayn, yawning, was half-tempted to pay five quid for a kip as he waited.

For all that, and with whatever waiting it entailed, none of this was time wasted, knew Zayn; and all of it by now a tradition. For some good years, now, it had been the same: guests, not only ducal and nawabal, from the Woolfonts far; the children....

He and Liam were natural anoraks; and Charles’ influence had worked readily upon them, such that in the run-up to Christmas as in the peak of the Peak Summertide, they made a habit, to the children’s delight, of indulging their love of heritage steam, on the Churnet Valley and the Leek and Rudyard’s Rudyard Lake Steam railways. And the years had passed even in preserved steam: Gemma Campion’s father, Sir Thomas Douty, who had with Charles recreated the Woolfonts & Chickmarsh down in Wilts, was gone, now, and Gems’ brother Gerry, wed to his Virginian aristocrat lady, was the current Douty baronet of Davill Court....

(There were other timetables Zayn knew by heart as well: the journey from Chapel-en-le-Frith to Buxton was but thirteen minutes by rail, but the direct route from Combs by motor to Leek itself, half an hour, for the Horans; from the duke’s Tidnock Hall, by motorcar, to Leek, was twenty minutes’ driving, or fourteen or less if His Grace, that Sir Stirling Moss of the C roads, whose spirit animal was Richard Hammond, took the wheel; it was the same for Haz and Louis from the Edge.... To reach Leek from the Woolfonts by rail meant a journey of six hours and a quarter, which time could be halved by driving up; and from Brum to Tidnock, by rail, wanted a trifle over two hours’ time, or one and the quarter on four wheels: but always, the Woolfonts contingent, and Their Highnesses even if in temporary residence at Yardley Hall, that oasis amidst the Brummishness of Birmingham, were ensconced _at_ Tidnock in this season. As for the grandparents, they might, once, in good years now sped, have driven an hour from Wolvo to Leek, or one and a half hours from Bradford (… _though much is taken, much abides; and though / We are not now that strength which in old days / Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, / One equal temper of heroic hearts, / Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield_ ); yet nowadays the duke saw to their safe and comfortable transport, and put them up at Tidnock if Bent Clough were too packed.)

O the years … _eheu, fugaces_.... Bishop Paddick was nowadays gaunt with long illness cheerfully borne; and his niece and ward, _his_ Wee Molly, up at University; Fr Pip was not coming up, nor his sisters by adoption, Olivia and Sophia, the one on strength at Sparsholt, the other on Staff at Kew; no more were their parents, rather to Zayn’s relief: he admired Edmond Huskisson, but one stroppy Tommo-sort was enough, and Chef Gates … well, it was always unnerving to entertain a culinary cross of Haz and Brian May. But Teddy’s and Edmond’s adopted son AJ, whose Black British father had been a bold Fusilier, one of the Fallen, and whose Mum had not survived her husband’s loss, had leave, and was joining them: Lt AJ Birkett RRF, who was intended (by Brig the duke of Taunton, late the Intelligence Corps) someday to command his father’s old regiment.

That was Charles all over, really. Yet he, and even Her Grace, were not the only or the greatest of influences upon them all. Headmaster Mirza and Bishop Paddick, for example … well, Zayn freely admitted that Sher Mirza was who he’d have liked to be When He Grew Up, scholar and Serious Composer and all. And – no, those good years of unknowing preparation had been no waste – it was a source of pride to Zayn that, differ though their paths might, he shared with the Headmaster the title, _Hajji,_ whatever conclusions he held now as to his conscience.

Nor was that all he shared with this year’s guests. He and his beloved Liam could take satisfaction, in the land of old and just renown, in honours earnt and recognition granted. He and Liam, and Harry for Cheshire, were Deputy Lieutenants now, just as Rupert Mallerstang was for Cumbria and Their Graces for Wilts. (Another memory: Charles, and the universally-beloved Millicent, taking him and Haz to task: ‘green eyes are lovely, dear, so long as they’re from genetics, not jealousy’; ‘both of you wished to be the prettiest and the cleverest’; ‘you were sulkin’, damn me, Styles, over his takin’ up Tomlinson’s time, and you, Malik, resentin’ that whatever stick he got, you got it worse, owin’ t’ bigotry’: and the healing which had at last followed.) He and Niall were, like Sir Sher Mirza – and the duke –, KBE (O, the irony, Ireland and the former Raj!), a step higher in the Order than the Hon. Jamie’s CBE; all five were knights, all the same, Liam, Haz, and the Tommo knights bachelor, and Liam CBE like Jamie, as Louis and Harry were OBE with it; and Liam, like Sir Sher, a Companion of Honour. (The Tommo liked to sark that _he_ was the Ringo of One Direction even now that they were ‘OAP Direction’: but he’d _chosen_ to decline the Order of Merit.) Of course, none of them was nor was likely to be awarded the Garter, or the GCB, or made GCVO, but they weren’t any of them Stuart dukes and highly decorated former officers of the Green Slime, either.

In fact, smiled Zayn to himself, thinking of Leek’s local food producer Cottage Delight (trust the Tommo to have made ‘cottaging’ jokes), his husband’s CH had been awarded largely for cheese, of a sort of which Highgrove organically approved, and as long supplied to Cottage Delight and sold retail at Leek’s monthly Fine Food Market and on Totally Locally first Sundays in the Market Place.

And, of course, that was the other thing, wasn’t it. Christmas shopping meant, in part, online shopping; in the Peak, amidst and amongst friends and neighbours and rural courtesies, it meant making certain to patronise the shops of Buxton and Longnor as well as of Leek; but it was neither shopping alone, nor preserved railways, nor the Winter sightings of brambling and great spotted woodpecker at RSPB Coombes Valley, drew them so often to Leek after Remembrance Sunday and before Christmas.

Sometimes, Zayn almost despaired: it seemed as if every last one of his _gora_ friends and relations and in-laws – and his husband, and the sprogs – wanted only to go into Leek and eat at Maazi. (Bar Their Graces, who were amenable to any choice, but openly amused by the only Indian restaurant known to man which prided itself on having, as its four locations, Matlock, Hathersage, Leek, and … Hanoi.) Zayn was fond enough of achari chicken and lamb nihari, but sometimes he wanted one of Aplin’s oatcakes, or tea at the White Hart, a cut off the joint down the pub, or a Lawtons pie.

None of it, though, wasted years, time unredeemed.

And here they came: the Maliks and Paynes and their kith; Their Highnesses and Their Graces, Sir Niall and Lady Horan and their brood, Sir Haz and Sir Tommo and theirs; Lord and Lady Grampound and a small courtesy baron and two Hons.; Lord and Lady Mallerstang and three Hons.; the Hon. Jamie and the Hon. Cats and Small Val; Mr Birkett, that subaltern in obvious mufti, and Bishop Paddick and Sir Sher, exemplars of three loves, having renounced the fourth for conscience’ sake. But never mind rank and place, title and precedence: here were the family, and dear friends with them, Nobby and Nas, Mils and Charles, Hetty and Mark and the children; Rupe and Bells and Jamie and Cats and the sproglets; AJ and Noel and Sher; Nialler and His Lot, Larry Stylinson and theirs, the band back together as always....

And most of all … most blest of all.... Kaz and Moll and Jos, of course, bearing all the influence of all these upon them; and Liam, best beloved Liam, with the twins, inspired by Noel’s niece, hoped for by their elder siblings, godparented – Bunnykins and all – by the duke and duchess: Doniya Millicent Waliyha and Charles Nicholas Yaser, wide-eyed in this Advent which prepares yearly for the gift of the Child.

Beaming, Zayn looked upon them, and upon their other dad, strong and splendid whatever the year, wherever the time – not wasted, but spent preparing for this, all unknowing – had gone. There he was; as throughout a whole lot of history. And Zayn heard in his mind’s ear, not his own long-ago lyric – _there you are, there you are; you’re there with open arms_ –, but, rather, the plangent tenor sax, and his Liam’s voice, covering, at ducal insistence, in the style rather of Junior Walker than that of James Taylor, the Marvin Gaye classic: _I needed the shelter of someone’s arms, and there you were; / I needed someone to understand my ups and downs / And there you were; / With sweet love and devotion / Deeply touching my emotion / I want to stop and thank you, baby, / I just want to –_ stop _–; and thank you, baby...._

_Yes,_ thought Zayn, as he opened his arms: _How sweet it is to be loved by you._

* * *

  


 

**Author's Note:**

> A happy Christmas, to all.


End file.
